I've since decided that my surprisingly high score (average to slightly above average, IIRC) on that recognition test we all took reflects the difference between long and short term memory, because I will fail to recognize people I've known for years if it's been a while.
In real life, though, when I run into someone I don't know well, I panic -- "That looks kind of like someone I've met before. Given the way my memory works, that doesn't tell me anything at all about whether they are the person I'm thinking of, or whether they just look sort of vaguely similar to someone I've met before." And I stare blankly at them until they cue me in.
Yeah, that's me too.
2: But the people you're supposed to know start to die off, so it all works out.
OTOH, I can now recognize and name any of the two dozen dogs at our local dog park while their owners are just a blur, so perhaps if I don't recognize someone it's just because they're not interesting.
And I stare blankly at them until they cue me in.
And then you are able to hone in on their identity.
I'm willing to tell you the truth, LB: those two guys look nothing alike.
The GMU gym posts a guest login to the University wifi during swim meets it hosts for the local community. They're otherwise unfriendly to swimmers' parents: No folding chairs! No coolers!.
This, exactly. And God forbid someone I *should* know on sight, gets a radical haircut, or new glasses, in the month or two since I've seen him.
Routine questions to my partner while out: "Is that Steve X or the double? " and "Would a normal person see that (resemblance)?"
Preach it sister. I have all sorts of trouble like this.
I was so excited to be able to illustrate the feeling with pictures -- I know there's no real resemblance there when I look at them next to each other, but I can't search my memory for a face. I remember faces by something much more like lists of adjectives, and if the adjectives are the same for two people, I'm lost.
I was hoping someone who's good at faces would comment and talk about what it's like for them -- is it just inconceivable that they could mix up the two actors, or do they just have a better, more precise list of adjectives they're working from, or how does it work?
Also, "youngish" is covering about a 20-year span here (not quite, but). I'll take it, though!
And I am wrong, anyway. Only an 11 year difference. For some reason I thought Matt Smith was in his early 20s.
I was hoping someone who's good at faces would comment and talk about what it's like for them -- is it just inconceivable that they could mix up the two actors,
I don't have a great face memory, but yes, it is inconceivable that I would mix up these two actors.
Although, they do those hilarious studies where one actor ducks behind a counter and a different one pops up, and people don't seem to notice - even when the person changes gender or race. (Actually, race-switch gets the best odds of being noticed.) So maybe I'm kidding myself.
(Although I think those studies aren't informative, because it's so wildly bizarre to think that a stranger must be playing a prank on you, which they basically are. I can imagine that many test subjects would think "Huh, I'm disoriented/confused/weird" and keep right on going.)
This makes me think I'm actually better at faces than you, LB, which is not something I would have guessed. OTOH, I have probably watched more Doctor Who than you.
I have experienced the exact same mental vexation you describe, though, when trying to remember the faces of two similar people I last saw several years ago.
I'm really quite bad. Anyone I've spent less than a couple of hours in conversation with, if you ever thought I recognized you, I was faking it on social cues. At some point I get a feel for body language, and that sticks -- someone I can really reliably recognize, I could probably do it as well with a bag over their head as without.
Trust me on this. There's no polite way to suggest that other people wear bags on their heads.
(Although I think those studies aren't informative, because it's so wildly bizarre to think that a stranger must be playing a prank on you, which they basically are. I can imagine that many test subjects would think "Huh, I'm disoriented/confused/weird" and keep right on going.)
I think the point is that our brains do not do well at noticing changes when we don't expect there to be changes. So there's every reason to expect that people will continue to look basically the same from moment to moment, and very little reason to suspect that (for any reason) they will instanteneously change completely in appearance. So whether it's the result of a prank or not, we're not set up to handle it, which is what the studies are designed to probe. In any case, when surveyed afterwards people generally have no idea, so it's not like they just see the change and then decide it can't be the case and move on.
14: And the real metric is their age while doing the show which brings it down to 5-9 year difference.
I mean, I know what it feels like to see someone in the grocery store and know I know them, but can't place them. But I can usually assume that they're equally unsure of who I am.
In any case, when surveyed afterwards people generally have no idea, so it's not like they just see the change and then decide it can't be the case and move on.
But how exactly do they survey the people? Are the people expected to generate the oddball experience? I would feel like such a jackass saying "I think the stranger switched from black to white when those workers carrying the door passed between us," even if I had a suspicion. I'd mostly be in escape mode, trying to do whatever seemed most expedient to get the fuck out of the conversation.
6: I'm willing to tell you the truth, LB: those two guys look nothing alike.
The one on the left is not a guy, heebie. It is the TARDIS.
I do believe that we really don't notice these things, too. I didn't see the gorilla with the basketball in that video, for example. I get that it's a real, mental phenomenon.
When I was growing up, it was a very small town and I looked a great deal like a younger version of my father. I got to assuming that nearly everybody I spoke to knew who I was even if I didn't know who they were. I could never tell if it was reasonable for me to not know who this person is (i.e. somebody I never met before who sees a family resemblance) or whether I knew the person well but couldn't place their face.
Eventually, all the being polite to strangers got to me and I left for the city.
I wouldn't say they look nothing alike but then I am also dreadful at remembering people.
to see someone in the grocery store and know I know them
I'm not even reliable with that. If someone looks familiar to me, they might be someone I've met. Or they might be someone who looks sort of like someone I've met, in the same sort of way that Matt Smith looks like David Tennant (that is, not really at all). It makes behaving in a civilized fashion really really hard.
I'm just saying that I'm not sure on how I'd perform, because I can totally tell those two guys apart in under 30 seconds.
22: You could encourage people to spill any weird impressions by prompting them with "This is a psych experiment. We're asking to find out if you noticed the strange thing that happened five minutes ago." If they noticed it but didn't believe themselves, that'd cue them to admit: "When I came in, I could have sworn the black woman running the cash register was a red-headed man." If they really didn't see the change in the moment, they wouldn't be able to guess.
"If I were an eyewitness to a crime committed by Matt Smith, and they put David Tennant in the lineup, I'd probably send him to jail without hesitation, unless I were focusing on how bad I am at this sort of thing."
I've actually done this experiment with security students. Told them how to describe a person correctly (what details to include and in what order), got them to practice it a few times on photos. Then I got a colleague to walk into the room, chat to me for thirty seconds and leave. Then I said "OK, your test starts now. Question one - describe in writing the guy who was just in here talking to me."
And that's pretty much ideal eyewitness conditions: brightly lit room, he's standing ten feet away, they aren't stressed, there's minimal time between seeing him and writing the description.
It's amazing how much they got wrong. One student was able to put down nothing except the single word "BLACK".
Which my colleague was; but, as he pointed out, "there's more than one of us out there".
Eyewitness identification of strangers is worse than useless and shouldn't be allowed in court (and probably not in investigations, either).
30: What's interesting to me about that is that I know I am unusually bad with faces, and when I talk about what it feels like, people are often surprised about how bad I am. But that sort of experiment suggests that a lot of people are pretty much in my shoes, and they just have coping mechanisms that keep them from having to admit it to themselves.
I'm like you, LB, in the context of movies. I get these clues from a movie, that this character is the tall, stocky guy with the black hair. If there's another character who also fits that description, I'm lost. Which is which? I might KNOW that these are two different characters, but I can't be SURE of which is which until I've seen them next to each other. It's irritating that the movie doesn't lay out the pictures of its cast for me.
Despite this I still love gangster movies.
Last week TCM showed Truffaut's "L'Amour en Fuite". Here is the lead actor, and the male secondary lead. They look extremely similar. There is no excuse for dumping me into a scene with the second guy, and not making it clear that he isn't the first guy. They look exactly the same, to someone who hasn't seen either of them for more than ten minutes of my life. The first guy could have a job in a bookstore, why not? He doesn't seem to have any other sort of job.
In college once, our dean came up to me and said, "Oudemia! What a *marvellous* Desdemona you made! An absolutely fantastic performance!" Lovely, but I wasn't Desdemona -- it was my friend and roommate N, who doesn't look anything like me except insofar as we're both short and have longing darkish curlyish hair. So I explain and thank him and tell him I'll tell her what he said. Forward to a few days later, when the dean approaches me and says, "N! What a *marvellous* Desdemona you made! An absolutely fantastic performance!"
We really don't look a bit alike.
(and probably not in investigations, either)
"Please tell me exactly what happened without describing the person who did it."
I meant to say they look extremely similar unless you're able to directly compare them.
33: Oh, absolutely. Unless there's some thematic/plot reason for two characters to be confusable, I really resent casting similar looking actors in the same movie. It's really bad with actresses, because young-and-Hollywood-level-pretty defines a fairly small range of possible looks. Back in the asses-of-the-actresses period of Unfogged, something that hampered my participation in all the bickering was that I mostly couldn't distinguish the hotties Ogged was ogling.
What is the best simple summary of the point made in 31?
That seems like an area where modern cognitive science is well placed to make a real difference. Admittedly, you have to overcome at least 10 centuries of criminal law tradition, but still.
I had to do a photo lineup once. I was identifying a cop, and I'd seen his nametag, so my questioner knew who the cop was (or, at least, whose nametag he was wearing). I was extraordinarily relieved when I was told I'd picked the right guy. I had no confidence at all, even though I got a very good look at him.
I don't seem to have any trouble distinguishing actresses.
So, hey, turns out that Santorum won Iowa, and Perry is dropping out and endorsing Newt. What a silly bunch of people.
We really don't look a bit alike.
And you were insulted, right? I hate that. You have to understand that we faceblind people are handicapped. For those of us who are also assholes, that's just a coincidence.
40.1: I have all sorts of trouble, especially after a major hair redesign.
Unless there's some thematic/plot reason for two characters to be confusable, I really resent casting similar looking actors in the same movie. It's really bad with actresses, because young-and-Hollywood-level-pretty defines a fairly small range of possible looks.
I think you can more often distinguish the actresses by the type of clothes they wear. Or one of them has a silly hat that she wears in every scene, ahem Kat Dennings in "Thor".
35: point taken. I mostly meant lineups and photo arrays.
Yeah, what kills me about it is that I can have had a fascinating, intense conversation with someone where I feel a real connection was made. And a day and a half later, I'm still going to squint bemusedly at them wondering who they are. I love people with unusual coloring or facial scars.
41: No! I wasn't insulted! She's way prettier than I am.
38: It's not a terribly complicated story even in detail. People are really, really bad at recognizing unfamiliar faces. Like, under the kind of conditions that obtain in practice (they see somebody once briefly and have to identify them on a different day, especially from a photograph) they're in general no better than chance.
The canonical real-world example is when London police shot this guy because he matched the CCTV footage of this guy.
45: As a senior in high school, I went to some kind of camp thing and met a girl. I spent most of the free time in a three day camp with her. A few months later we were both at the same university and she came up to me. I didn't recognize her.
I think I'm pretty good with faces. My mum remembers everyone she's ever laid eyes on pretty much - you get ridiculous stories from her about how she bumped into someone she was sure she knew and it turned out they had a conversation in a doctor's waiting room for 10 minutes thirty years ago. I don't think I'm right down her end of the spectrum.
But if I think someone looks familiar, it generally turns out that I do know them somehow. Recently I went to see a play that Kid A was in, and there was a woman in the audience who looked really familiar. I figured it must just be someone I saw a lot round town (e.g. had just been out for dinner beforehand and seen one of the librarians in the restaurant), but then afterwards it turned out to be Kid A's friend's mother. Whom I don't know, but the mother and daughter are facially very alike, so that's why I'd recognised her.
33: Come on! That's Antoine Doinel on the left! Just stare at him and say to yourself, "Antoine Doinel! Antoine Doinel! Antoine Doinel!"
Eyewitness identification of strangers is worse than useless and shouldn't be allowed in court (and probably not in investigations, either).
A friend of mine was once arrested for rape on the strength of the victim's description, but when he was put in front of her she said, "Don't be silly, he didn't look anything like that" (Verbatim, as far as I recall from his account). Which was great for my friend, not so much for the woman.
I'm not great with names/faces of people in real life, in the sense of putting the name to the face, but I'm pretty sure I'd always remember if I've met someone before and that my basic face recognition is at least average or better. So I'll meet someone, know I've spoken to them, and often have quite detailed memory of the conversation and about them, but completely blank on their name. I'm sure that's just paying attention. When I have a new intake of students at the martial arts class, I'll remember all their names, more or less right away. Although I'd forget them quickly again if they stop coming.
With actors and musicians it'll trigger my trivia-memory, though. So not only would I remember the face, I'd probably remember all kinds of trivial details about the things they'd been in, who directed the thing, etc ad infinitum. I'd pretty much never mix up two actors.
What do you mean, "you people"?
re: 53
There was a notorious Scottish rape case where a guy was arrested and convicted on the basis of DNA evidence, where his alleged victim, who knew him, insisted that he was not her attacker. She was absolutely adamant not only that she'd have recognised him, because she knew him, but also that he didn't even match the basic features of her attacker. The police, iirc, claimed she was mistaken in her identification (of him as not her attacker) as her recollection was trumped by the DNA evidence.
If I recall, his lawyers were appealing it on the grounds that there were some procedural errors in the DNA collection, and the victim was a witness on his behalf.
I had a friend who was arrested once and cited another time on the basis of eyewitness identification. Both times the eyewitness was correct. One of the times he may have actually told his name to the person who complained to the police, but not the other.
I'm also bad with names, but that's separate (well, I think if I were good with faces it would help, but it's not exactly the same problem). That one is about paying attention, though -- what I need to do is make myself say the name a couple of times, and then I've got it.
I've been better lately. I still don't have the knack of actually focusing on the name enough to make it stick the first time I hear it, but I've been apologetically asking for a repeat of new people's names at the close of the initial conversation. That's weird of me, but it's clearly just weird rather than insultingly inattentive like needing to be reintroduced in a subsequent conversation would be, and it helps a lot.
56: That's just weird. Was there an argument that there might have been not just procedural errors, but actual presence of his DNA on her from social contact?
33: Come on! That's Antoine Doinel on the left! Just stare at him and say to yourself, "Antoine Doinel! Antoine Doinel! Antoine Doinel!"
Yeah, I guess anyone watching the fifth Antoine Doinel movie is presumed to know what Antoine Doinel looks like. Not me, though! Come on, Truffaut! Just give the other guy a moustache!
Over Xmas I caught up on my Dr. Who watching, and I noticed they insisted on having females note, more than once, that the second guy there was "very good looking," or words to that affect.
I have two questions. First, is he really all that good looking, because I can't tell, and then second, if he is that good looking, why did they make a point of saying it more than once? Shouldn't it have been obvious to the viewer, either through direct observation or through observations of the female's reactions?
That happened in one of the episodes I was watching at the swim meet -- the doctor, incognito, rents a room in a pudgy guy's apartment to investigate something upstairs, and the pudgy guy's pretty blonde friend for whom the pudgy guy has not yet confessed his love comments on how hot the doctor is. The point there was to give the pudgy guy a reason to be threatened, and the reason to do it through a comment from the blonde rather than from her being overcome with lust is that she was supposed to be in love with the pudgy guy: she's noticing that the doctor's hot, but in an impersonal kind of way because her actual attention is focused elsewhere.
How attractive are either of them really? Tastes differ, neither one of them really does it for me but they're not bad.
re: 60
I don't think they'd seen each other for a while. The victim, however, was clear that her attacker was relatively slightly built, and the guy arrested and convicted was a heavy set guy. So it wasn't purely face recognition.
I saw the case discussed on a documentary which was about supposed flaws in DNA evidence: broadly speaking that the statistical likelihood of a match for a certain number of locii wasn't as unlikely in unrelated individuals as was being claimed at the time (this was a long time ago); but the documentary also covered various problems with PCR, evidence collection, and so on. This documentary was a while ago, and still in the relatively early days of widespread use of DNA-profiling. I don't know what the outcome was in this particular case.
Eyewitness identification of strangers is worse than useless and shouldn't be allowed in court (and probably not in investigations, either).
...and yet it still enjoys an exalted position in the evidentiary pantheon. I half suspect that 22nd century jurists will regard our courts' reliance on eyewitness testimony much the way we regard, say, trial by ordeal.
I think it's fair to say both Dr Who actors, in fact all three of the recent ones, have a substantial female fan base. Tennant perhaps more than Smith, going by the UK press.
65 was a little too broad. Not all eyewitness testimony is as unreliable as identification of strangers.
That's the order I'd rank Tennant and Smith in myself, certainly, and the preceding guy whose name I can't recall head and shoulders above either.
68: Christopher Eccleston or Paul McGann?
56, 64: You probably don't recall the details, but why did they arrest the guy to even check his DNA? Did they have some circumstantial reason to arrest him, or did he have DNA on file from some earlier arrest that was found in a database search, so the whole case was the DNA match?
69: (googling) Eccleston. Probably in some objective sense less handsome than the other two, but appealing.
re: 70
It was a small Scottish seaside town, and the police DNA-screened the entire place, more or less. That is, they asked all the men of the appropriate age to volunteer to give samples. So he was picked up after he volunteered a sample as part of the screening process.
71: Huh. That's sort of a surprise. (Whereas McGann wouldn't have been.) There's no accounting for taste, I suppose.
Ah-hah. A bit of ninja-googling.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/edinburgh-east-fife/dna_flaws_set_to_clear_officer_jailed_for_rape_1_1296401
He was also a cop.
A dozen people in this thread have said they're bad with names and faces, so I'll make it 13. Me too. For a while I thought I had prosopagnosia. However, considering how many other people here report the same problem, I think either it's something that's much more common among Unfoggeders than in real life, or it's just one of those things that's hard to objectively self-assess. Maybe all the people in this thread are actually merely average at telling faces apart and keeping names straight, but we just seem bad by comparison to (1) really gregarious professional socializers like good politicians, or (2) people who are just as bad as us but work at names and faces really hard or hide it better.
I have a pair of cousins who are identical twins. I can't tell them apart; every time I see them I just try to be very attentive to hear someone use one of their names and match it up with what they're wearing or what their hairstyle is these days. I think my parents and sister can tell them apart at a glance, and if so that would make me worse at facial recognition than them, but still, I'm talking about identical twins here, so I'm not too embarrassed about this inability.
Here's the thing, though: I have another pair of sibling cousins on the other side of the family, and they aren't identical twins, and I can't tell them apart either. They're within two years of age, and I don't see them all that much, but still, one is taller than the other and their faces are definitely different. If they were both circulating at a party, no one would get them confused with each other, except maybe people in this thread. I just can't mentally keep the right name attached to the right face. So even as I'm saying that maybe we're not as bad with names and faces as we think, I'd say that I personally, yeah, am pretty bad with them.
I was rather startled by Smith's first appearance, as I was watching episodes back-to-back and wasn't aware that they had changed Doctors with the new season. Seeing his rather broad features pop up out of the Tardis when I expected Tennant's more elfin face left me unsettled.
63: Thanks. The blonde girlfriend had to say the Dr. was hott in front of her pudgy boyfriend so that Pudgy would have a reason to be jealous, and the director thought it was too hard to show that sequence (probably because that would have entailed a couple extra setups to shoot) so instead the director had the actors narrate it. Aha.
I'm seeing that kind of thing more and more in low budget indie movies. I'm glad the movies are made, but I wish they didn't have to take shortcuts like that. I don't go to a movie to have someone read me a story.
Under those circumstances (testing everyone in a small town), I'd actually worry that the odds of an accidental match would be higher than in the general population.
73: Yeah, I'm not really going to defend my taste in men as making any particular sense.
77.1: No, I don't think it was laziness. The point was that she had to say "He's hot" rather than act as if she's intensely attracted to him, because in the logic of story, she's not attracted to him in any personal sense: she's in love with Pudgy. I'm not saying Dr. Who is great filmmaking, but I don't think there was a "Show, don't tell" way of doing the same thing that would have served the same plot function.
79: Not to speak for him, but I think he's reasonably happy with how my erratic tastes have worked out for him.
I'm very bad with names. If I meet someone I will almost never remember a name the first time, and often it will take many times for it to stick. With faces I'm mediocre, but not as bad as LB. I dated a woman with an identical twin and got to the point where I easily distinguished them unless they'd done something silly like both get haircuts or switch jackets. A month or so into the relationship though, I was supposed to meetup with gf, but she sent her sister instead (who I'd only met once before), wearing one of the gf's jackets. I walked up to the sister and started kissing her. Embarrassing.
I may have told this story before, but a good friend of mine from law school married a guy I'd met once but didn't know a year after we graduated. I showed up at the wedding in a different state, and hanging around beforehand, I couldn't figure out why the groom kept on changing the flower in his lapel. I didn't figure out that he had an identical twin brother who was the best man until I saw them together at the altar.
In that case, I think the bride makes a small mark on the groom with a Sharpie.
A month or so into the relationship though, I was supposed to meetup with gf, but she sent her sister instead (who I'd only met once before), wearing one of the gf's jackets.
The hell? Was this some sort of test?
I saw the case discussed on a documentary which was about supposed flaws in DNA evidence: broadly speaking that the statistical likelihood of a match for a certain number of locii wasn't as unlikely in unrelated individuals as was being claimed at the time (this was a long time ago);
Not sure if this is precisely relevant, but this is a big problem with the DNA database that the UK government loves so much. DNA profiling has a very low false positive rate (contamination/deliberate falsification aside) if you're just testing a sample from the crime scene/victim against a given suspect. But if you're testing a sample against a database of millions of people, the false positive rate skyrockets.
re: 87
Yeah. The documentary at the time had some interesting anomalous cases, too. Of populations, for example, in which the typical statistical estimates broke down. I've no idea if those examples have been superseded by improved sequencing which goes for matches at much more locii.
87: You see this in medicine a bunch. Most people don't realize how you can take a 98% accurate test and have most positive findings be false if what you are looking for is rare.
I think there was a NYT (NYTM?) long piece about the problem of partial matches in big DNA databases, a year or two ago.
Partial matches and evil twins are the two biggest problems with DNA evidence.
80: No, I don't think it was laziness.
Your point, I think, is that Pudgy had to feel threatened by the Dr. even though his blonde girlfriend was not attracted to the Dr. In that case I'd rather have Pudgy simply act threatened by the Dr and let the audience figure out his reasons for feeling that: "Wow, Pudgy acts threatened, but his GF has given him no reason. I bet Pudgy has low self-esteem. He is, after all, pudgy." Put the onus on the actor to show us his reaction and make it believable. As you said, he was pudgy, so he could have used that to make his reaction believable.
Maybe they were covering for the fact that pudgy wasn't a good actor, even though he looked the part.
Obviously, eyewitness evidence has bigger weaknesses, but usually people will remember the evil-twin beard.
Evil twins become far and away the biggest problem if you count twins from evil alternate universes.
Actually, come to think of it, in most cases we're probably the evil AU.
Maybe they were covering for the fact that pudgy wasn't a good actor, even though he looked the part.
Or maybe they were writing for a wide age/maturity range.
They'd gone to get their hair cut, me to hang out in a bookstore, and I was supposed to meet gf at a certain time and place. Her haircut was taking longer so she sent her sister. (The fact that gf was going to come back with a different hairstyle didn't help) After this incident I spent some time carefully looking at their faces to find distinguishing features. One had a small freckle on her face and the other didn't.
How much time can you spend staring at your girlfriend's sister's face before it starts to get awkward?
In that case I'd rather have Pudgy simply act threatened by the Dr and let the audience figure out his reasons for feeling that:
Neither Moffat nor Davies (the New Who showrunners) are renowned for being subtle. It's marginally better under Moffat, who isn't into the Messiah complex the way Davies was, but he does tend to beat the audience round the head a bit.
Actually, come to think of it, in most cases we're probably the evil AU.
The evil AU is the distance between the sun and Bizarro World.
Alarmingly contextual word play. Hooray.
Given that Dr Who is fundamentally a kids' show, yeah, they might have been laying it on a bit thick.
I expect slightly different for a US audience as Pudgy bloke is actually quite famous here. Probably more so than Matt Smith at the time that episode was being filmed. I gather he's going to be opening on Broadway at some point, too, in:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/nov/16/one-man-two-guvnors-broadway
I only know British actors if they were in Harry Potter.
92: Still no. The writer wanted to give Pudgy a good reason to be threatened, not to look irrationally touchy. So they had the blonde comment on the doctor's attractiveness. But for plot reasons, she's commenting on his attractiveness rather than swept off her feet by it: the plot works if Pudgy is reasonable, but wrong, in feeling threatened. Having the blonde comment on the doctor's attractiveness, but not start swooning after him, threads that needle in a way that neither Pudgy getting wrecked for no reason nor the blonde getting all swoony would.
It's not terribly emotionally subtle or deep filmmaking, but I don't think it would have been improved by a change along the lines you describe.
Oh, that's who James Corden is. I like to listen to the Best of the Chris Moyles Show podcast and try to figure out what the celebrity guests are famous for. Some people can appear on the show a dozen times without any mention of who they are or what, if anything, their claim to fame is. e.g. "Louis Spence" or "Alicia Dixon".
I have seen a fair amount of Dr. Who discussion on the Internets, but I have never seen anything that makes me understand the show's appeal, even on a theoretical level. What do people like about that show?
(googling) Eccleston.
Eccleston has the advantage, for me, of looking exactly like my mental image of Dr Who.
I watched a season or two with Tennant, but then lost interest.
I'm also terrible with faces and am absolutely, completely horrible at giving descriptions -- I can have a hard time remembering the hair color of somebody that I talked to earlier in the day.
Some people can appear on the show a dozen times without any mention of who they are or what, if anything, their claim to fame is
That's kind of the idea of fame, isn't it? If you have to say what they're famous for, they're not famous.
106: First, I have a mental age of about nine, so start from there. Once you accept that, it does a nice job of goofy-exciting/scary, combined with goofy-sentimental. If "There's something inexplicably terrifying in the room upstairs, now a ridiculous person (with a ridiculous, yet tragic, back story) will swoop in and save the day," doesn't appeal to you, then there's nothing in it for you.
Some people can appear on the show a dozen times without any mention of who they are or what, if anything, their claim to fame is.
On that note, I very much enjoyed The Trip, but I was amused rather than invested, in any way, in the various jokes based on the small differences in fame between Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Neither of them are part of my pop culture (though I've liked Steve Coogan in all the movies I've seen him in).
am absolutely, completely horrible at giving descriptions
I can't describe anyone in a way that doesn't come off as viciously hostile (which means that mostly I don't try). Any quality that seems vividly identifying to me sounds like I'm cutting the person up to anyone else listening to the description. It's possible that I'm just not a nice person.
109: Also, the last three Doctors have been fantastically charismatic. Although, for me this made the Master storylines not work very well, since he did not seem their equal.
I thought those could have been better written -- I think Simm could have carried it off with a slightly more restrained script, but the writers made him over-the-top to the point where he stopped being menacing and got silly.
Or, clearly silly was part of the plan. But too silly to remain menacing.
I had seen several episodes of the series Bones before I realized that two supporting actresses were not the same person. far left and far right in this picture" rel="nofollow">. My wife pointed out that they were of different ethnic groups. They also had had several scenes together that I had seen without registering.
I have seen a fair amount of Dr. Who discussion on the Internets, but I have never seen anything that makes me understand the show's appeal, even on a theoretical level. What do people like about that show?
a) It's one of the few fictional shows that's just as fun for kids and adults (cf Pixar's appeal).
b) As a consequence, it has enormous nostalgia value for many Brits, who grew up on it.
c) It's got time travel. And aliens. And silliness. And dodgy special effects.
d) At it's best, it's genuinely gripping and moving. See, for instance, Blink, which I would argue is one of the best single episodes of television ever made.
It occurs to me, though, that recently I called the bike shop to see if repairs were done, they asked me what color my bike was, and I couldn't remember (after owning it for about 4 months).
111: I can't describe anyone in a way that doesn't come off as viciously hostile
This threw me for a loop, as in: Why would you do that?
But then, reflecting on my own descriptions of people, they tend to emphasize more pronounced features, like so:
Has a big nose.
Kind of frizzy hair.
Has those kind of watery-blue eyes, with no eyelashes, know what I mean?
Skinny in that frail chicken way, like fragile bones.
I guess that could sound hostile, though I wouldn't really describe it that way.
Anyway, it depends on the purpose for which you're describing someone (a columnist whose work everyone knows, and you're describing what he/she looks like? or describing for purposes of later identification at a party?), but I'm thinking that we tend to latch onto the features a caricaturist would emphasize.
118: That's pretty much it -- I'm trying to sound vivid, and the result comes off sounding hostile.
Has a big nose.
Kind of frizzy hair.
Has those kind of watery-blue eyes, with no eyelashes, know what I mean?
Skinny in that frail chicken way, like fragile bones.
To be fair, Chicken Lady does provoke hostility in other ways.
117 You don't even SEE color.
119: I wouldn't have thought that sounded hostile, that's all. You're trying to provide an overview, a snapshot, right? It's not going to do to say "Medium height, short brown hair, medium build." Unless you're going out of your way to be neutral.
I'm worried now that I'm hostile in my descriptions.
Eyewitness identification of strangers is worse than useless and shouldn't be allowed in court (and probably not in investigations, either).
I can't describe anyone in a way that doesn't come off as viciously hostile
Heh. I've never been tested at it, so it is possible I'm fooling myself, but I think I could give quite good descriptions of someone I got a decent look at. But they wouldn't be descriptions that help most people: probably a welterweight, carries his traps high, small calves for such a tall person, not especially graceful, turns his feet out when he walks.
Something like that. I think I'd be right about the description, but it wouldn't convey a lot in a line-up.
Other things I've said recently in descriptions:
Crane-like.
Cupid-bow lips, lots of lipstick.
Straggly hair.
Okay, I see your point.
124: I think it's just the way I phrase things. I've gotten the reaction enough times, though, that I just avoid describing people unless I mean to be cruelly mocking.
Wait, I take it back. I still don't think those descriptions are hostile.
probably a welterweight, carries his traps high, small calves for such a tall person, not especially graceful, turns his feet out when he walks
Why are you watching me, Megan?
116 gets it right, I think.
Like any long-running series the quality is patchy, but the 'new' Who stuff has always had at least a couple of really good episodes per series. Imagine if Star Trek and the X-files overlapped, and then ran for 50 years.
To make sure that you're having a good day, Eggplant.
Still no. The writer wanted to give Pudgy a good reason to be threatened, not to look irrationally touchy.
So they had Blondie be thoughtless? I dunno. I still think they could have covered that moment better. Blondie's line was klunky.
As for why I like Dr. Who? The (somewhat) silly sense of adventure. It is fun to watch characters like the Dr and his female companion o-the-moment get swept up in the adventure of it all. The best Drs and companions, IMO, are the ones who can show that to me. And nostalgia too. It used to be the only English actors I knew were Sean Connery and Mike Meyers. Heheh.
Certainly, I can't argue that there's no clunky dialog.
132: I got my italics backwards. Still, the hook is baited, the line is out, and I've got my outboard puttering along in reverse . . .
Imagine if Star Trek and the X-files overlapped, and then ran for 50 years.
I find myself horrified.
I caught a few episodes of some of the new Dr. Whos, and found them sorely lacking compared to the old, but I'm sure that's not a new sentiment. The female sidekick begins to tire.
Utterly tangentially, I saw 10 minutes of a television replay of what's billed as "Frank Miller's Sin City" a few nights ago -- these 10 minutes involved two women being killed off after sexual activity, and lots of tortured machismo by the male figures -- and was as put off then as I was when I initially saw the film. I actually had a bad dream about it.
re: 135.2
I'm pretty sure that's false nostalgia for the older stuff. Not that I'm mad keen on all of the new stuff, but I'm old enough to have watched in the 70s, too.
There's just not enough Venusian Karate and velvet smoking jackets.
Downhill all the way since William Hartnell left, if you ask me.
I'm pretty sure that's false nostalgia for the older stuff.
Probably. It was so charmingly kitschy! What's-his-name with the fluffy hair and the very long scarf, who was so awkward yet charming, was just so, uh, charming and distracted. The few episodes of the new I've seen seem to cast Dr. Who as a player, who is only goofy if you stretch your imagination quite a bit. I can't say I approve.
Oh, they're all still pretty goofy. Certainly much less sexless, but pretty goofy.
I dunno if the new Dr is a player, but he certainly is "all that and knows it." Is that what a "player" is?
re: 139
Tom Baker! I'm pretty sure based on 139 that you are just going with 'the modern world is rubbish'. The Baker character was always a player, assuming you are using the word in the way I understand it.
Tom Baker! Yes. Terrific.
I am probably going with the 'modern world is rubbish', and I know that I don't give the Tom Baker character nearly enough credit for being a player. There was all that stuff about him grappling in a savvy manner with the overlords, whoever they were. My understanding is a bit vague now, because it's been a while.
I haven't followed the new Dr. Who, really, and I may be being unfair to the new ones.
"false nostalgia"
What would make nostalgia false (besides lying about it) ?
I think it's the difference between fondly looking back on something you remember accurately, which would be 'true' nostalgia, and fondly looking back at an inaccurate memory.
I think "nostalgia" itself implies at least some level of inaccuracy. I suppose the inaccuracy could be about affective aspects not factual details.
But, the dictionary agrees with LB.
Yeah, what 145 said. It's not a comparison between actual 60s and 70s Dr Who and current Dr Who, but a comparison between a half-remembered (and not very accurate) vision of 70s Who compared with a partial sampling of the current one. I'm also probably reading it that way because that fits with my understanding (possibly unfair?) of parsimon's general world view.
Not that I'd want to invest a lot of time in defending the new one, but the old ones could be a bit shit, too.
A clearer way of putting it would be, 'a false impression created by nostalgia', which leaves open whether nostalgia is immune to error (in the way that first-person reports are often held to be).
From viewing a few examples of the Peter Davison era, it seems to me that Doctor Who now is about 30% a kids' show, and Doctor Who in 1983 was about 70% a kids' show. It's grown up as has the people who love it.
a comparison between a half-remembered (and not very accurate) vision of 70s Who compared with a partial sampling of the current one
Guilty on that.
I'm also probably reading it that way because that fits with my understanding (possibly unfair?) of parsimon's general world view.
This I don't understand. Have I told you how much I love Prince, whatever his name is now? Also love Living Colour. And the X-Files was great, as was Farscape and Lost. American Idol, not so much.
re: 151.last
Yeah, I've tended to read you as (I hope this isn't insulting!) a hippie declinist.
'Things aren't as good as they were in a more authentic hemp-woven real-instruments and wooden underwear past.'
I'm not immune to a bit of nostalgic declinism, myself, fwiw. It's just for a different period.
152: I guess I'll have to cop to that, in very rough contours. Though I have no idea what wooden underwear is doing in the mix.
I have an extreme fondness for music of the King Crimson and Piano Magic variety, which are fairly electrified. I think the categories you're applying are outdated.
FWIW, electric-guitars are a central part of that declinist narrative -- contrasting late 60s/early 70s proper musicians [Hendrix, Fripp, or whoever] with their fallen successors. Wooden underwear is just a bit of comedy hyperbole.
I read it as woolen and thought "Well, in case of incontinence at least they won't have to be cleaned.".
Anyway, I'm not unsympathetic to the mental process myself.
Thanks for the clarifications re nostalgia.
I bristled at the "declinist" part of it. It suggests not only that the modern day is forwardist, which I suppose it is, chronologically speaking, but that anything but the modern day represents a decline. It would be an error to think that.
Somewhat off topic: I've recently discovered I'm really bad at facial expressions. At the DMV, when they took my photo, I was trying to do this fetching come-hither stare (don't ask, I don't know why), but it came out looking like I was about to attack the camera.
Spontaneity is always best. The truth will out, and all that.
Otherwise, you turn out like Mitt Romney!
re: 159
Well, no. I clearly don't think that. Hence my reference to somewhat sharing the same thought process, just about different time periods/things. But there is a current of thought that tends to think that music/art/film was always or generally better in the past, and I sometimes (sometimes) read that into things you've written. Anyway, I was teasing rather than making some big serious point.
162: Peace, and I think you are reading that in. I certainly haven't worked out my feelings about authenticity, a dog-whistle term (among a certain crowd) if ever there was one. There is plenty I find not to my taste in the modern world, but I don't think I harbor any knee-jerkism against it, or any rosy vision of the past. I cannot stand Donovan.
47
It's not a terribly complicated story even in detail. People are really, really bad at recognizing unfamiliar faces. Like, under the kind of conditions that obtain in practice (they see somebody once briefly and have to identify them on a different day, especially from a photograph) they're in general no better than chance.
I don't believe this is universally true. There was a guard at the Lawrence Livermore Lab (which employed thousands of people) who was known for his ability to remember people. When my father started to work there he was introduced briefly to the guard who thereafter greeted him by name.
And I don't believe the no better than chance anyway. I am terrible at this but I could remember gross features (white or black, man or women) and that is enough to be better than chance.
I am extremely bad at remembering or identifying faces. I still remember three blonde middle-aged patrons I had almost 20 years ago. I literally had to look at their library cards every single time because I never knew which of them it was. And they were all regulars, in two or three times a week.
As a partial compensating mechanism I try to latch on to individual features and memorize them. This kind of works, and has the slightly odd side effect that I am better than many people I know in doing cross-ethnic identification. So I end up in the weird situations where I'm going "What do you mean, Mamadou and Abdul look alike? Mamadou has that big browridge and Abdul has little eyes!" But I can't actually visualize either of their faces to save my soul.
In a one-time meeting or event I can also focus on clothing or glasses and do well, but I'm totally up the creek if I meet those people later. You changed your clothes! I have no idea who you are!
160: That is a good thing to know about yourself. Acting classes can help with that, or even trying out different expressions in front of a mirror. I was told years ago that my 'blank' face, the one I have while feeling no emotion, came across as angry, so I actively worked on changing this. It is amazing how much better people respond to a very slight grin. At times I practice smiling with my eyes and not my mouth, and people really respond to that. Its a fun thing to play around with.
apparently when my face is in repose it looks as if I am really mad at you this time, and you are in big trouble. I did not think this.
